What began as a simple journey has turned into so much more...

Alexandria

Geography and General Information

The city sits in a valley south of Dragon Mountain, situated in roughly the south-center of the nation. Many trade roads lead to Alexandria, as well as waterways. Main industries include trade goods, gems from the mountains to the north, weapons, metal-working, and support industries for the many government groups in the city. Also all the other things that come with massive cities. The population of Alexandria is close to half a million, give or take.

Alexandria is host to many universities, as well as high temples to most of the major deities. As far as the King’s Palace, it is notoriously modest, owing to King Imperius’ desire to see a nation that did not need a king, and thus did not need a large palace in which to hold a king. The central government buildings are massive, though, and are actually connected to the largest of temples in the city, that of the civilization goddess Erathis.

Dragon Mountain

The massive structure of Dragon Mountain looms to the north, but restoration teams have gone in to fortify and normalize the many passages there, making many parts of the mountain into low-income housing for the city’s many workers. The actual site of the red wyrm Infyrana’s lair is a tourist attraction now, where visitors can see artists’ renditions of the famously epic battle, buy replica copies of the weapons & armor used by the Wheels of Progress, etc.

Guilds, Unions, & Other Groups

The city is full of all sorts of organizations of varying value and interest.

International Cartographer’s Guild… Their main headquarters is here, though they have branch offices in many other nations and places of interest across the world. They also have a publicly-available teleportation circle site (actually it’s a network of 12 circles linked-together, so that if two people from different locations try to teleport to it at once, they’ll each be diverted to an adjacent circle… which is infinitely better than the alternative. While the Teleportational Location Key (TLK) for the Alexandria site is freely distributed, the Guild does charge hefty fees for the TLKs to permanent circles in their other branch offices [ARCANACHECK: it takes 1 healing surge/day for a year-and-a-day to make a teleportation circle permanent, so the fees they charge for that investiture of time & effort make sense]. Certain destinations may also have local restrictions about what (or who) may be teleported (the branch in Pax Humana, for instance, severely limits non-human usage of their circle). In addition to teleportation resources, they also offer a great variety of maps of all sorts and locations. They will also pay top gold piece for maps of as-yet uncharted areas.

Dwarven Miners Union… Probably the strongest union in the nation, many refer to it as “The Union”, with all other unions failing to get the article or the capitalization. Massively well-funded and notoriously stubborn, this union has ensured that workers of all types have reasonable working conditions… though most of their efforts are focused on miners. If this union were to go on strike, commerce in the nation would suffer greatly, and they could certainly force a confrontation with whatever governmental body was giving them problems. Thankfully, it has never come to that.

Reserve Garrison… The only standing army of soldiers in the nation is housed in a barracks just south of the city. Their current general is an elf who somehow commands the respect of dwarves as well. See below for more information on General Stonearrow. In all, there are probably 1,000-1,500 troops active in the garrison at any time, though they are most often activated to help with natural disasters, etc.

Union of Farmers & Food Importers… The dwarves have unions, so why shouldn’t the halflings? This union, headquartered in Alexandria, is responsible not only for the many farmers across the nation of Ionia, but also for the many trade relationships that exist with the (largely halfling) nation of Farmville to the south of Ionia.

Dissident Park… Because every voice is allowed to speak, there is a district set up around a large park where those who wish to complain about the government (or anything else) can do so. Here you’ll find chapters of the Dwarvish group that believes King Ironhammer is still coming back; the Cult of Corax offshoot of the Raven Queen’s church which believes that if necromancy is criminalized, only criminals will have necromancy; the Tiefling Registration Safety league (TRS), a group of dragonborn who believe that all tieflings should be forced to register and swear magically binding oaths not to traffic with demons; etc etc.

Orginazitsiya… The dragonborn equivalent of the Russian Mob, it is widely believed that this group has a large presence in Alexandria, though no proof of such exists. Sure, potentially contentious tieflings have been known to turn up dead, with their horns sawed off and their bodies stripped and dumped in allies… but that hardly means there’s a huge criminal organization in the city. Please…

Wyvern Jousting League… Alexandria has a pretty awesome Wyvern Jousting league, which also invites teams from other cities around Ionia. The current most-winning team is headed by Primus Imperius, the grand-nephew of King Titus Imperius.